OMG so sorry I didn't update! Fanfiction hasn't been letting me upload documents, and somehow I refused to believe it was because of my computer. Then I tried it on the library's computer, and it works just fine. -.- Anyway, on with the chapter! Thanks for the review Sam (Thank you so much! I try to go for charming *grins*)! Also, thanks for the follows and faves :) Next update will be tomorrow or Friday, depending if I have time tomorrow.

Chapter 12: Rosie Malfoy is Obviously a Dark Witch

The next few months flew by, and Aurora, noticing Rosie's tentative friendship with Tom, had just sent an owl to end Rosie's psychiatrist appointments when Dobby just had to go and discover all the very suspicious Dark Arts books Rosie had hidden under her bed.

Aurora had been infuriated, of course. Rosie tried to explain that she'd never actually read any of them, and that she had just been trying to prevent Abraxas and his friends from unknowingly stumbling across something dangerous, but her mother would have none of it. That same day, she sent another owl to the psychiatrist that negated her previous letter and reinstated their meetings five times a week. Rosie complained that if she had to sit through more of these psychiatrist appointments, there was a real chance she'd go insane, but her mother completely ignored her protests.

The only positive side to the situation was that Aurora had summoned all the even remotely Dark books in the household (so, about half of them), and placed them in a trunk under a powerful Extension Charm, then locked the trunk up with heavy warding magic and put it under her own bed. Rosie hadn't been too interested in hexes, curses, or anything else of the sort to begin with, so it wasn't a big loss to her since she was still allowed to access the remaining books in the library, but she hadn't missed the annoyed look Tom had sent her when a few books had soared out of his room and joined the procession of books floating from the library to their parents' chambers.

When she had seen the books flying out of Tom room, she had glared at him disapprovingly and gone back into her room, slamming the door behind her. Why had she been befriending him? Was she really so desperate as to befriend Lord Voldemort?! He'd killed Harry! She was supposed to have killed him by now. That was the entire reason she'd come here. Instead she played Chocolate Frog Card War with him, engaged in friendly competition with him during their classes with Aurora, even danced with him during their lessons without purposefully stepping on his toes, and had placed a bunch of charms on his broom so that she could play quidditch with him without him falling to his death.

What the hell was wrong with her? Why did she have to befriend everyone she met? Why couldn't he just be overtly nasty like Walburga and Octavia so that she could avoid him like the plague? Instead he acted all innocent, and she just had to be nice to him now. In fact, the only time he'd conducted himself in a vaguely non-innocent way since she'd met him was when he'd broken Sasha's leg his first day at Malfoy Manor. Since then he'd proven himself a conniving little brat on multiple occasions, but that was normal here in Slytherin territory. Over the past year-and-a-half, the worst thing he'd done was steal Augusta's Chocolate Frog Cards, and he hadn't done anything of the sort since that incident.

Rosie was slowly and begrudgingly coming to realise that the Voldemort who had killed Harry wasn't the same as Tom Riddle, and definitely not the same as Tom Malfoy. Sure, he could speak to snakes, immersed himself in questionable literature, and found humour in manipulating the people around him, but he wasn't a killer. Maybe something had happened to Tom Riddle (and would perhaps happen to Tom Malfoy) to push him over that edge. The discovery of the concept of horcruxes? Discovering his wizarding blood came from a house of nasty, inbred creeps? Or something else?

In any case, he was only ten years old, and he hadn't killed anyone yet, so Rosie's conscience wouldn't let her kill him. Besides, with this psychiatrist involved, if Tom suddenly died, the man would probably let it out that Rosie had tried to kill him before, they'd investigate her and find out she'd done it, and she'd be locked up in Azkaban for the rest of her life, unable to build another time machine to reincarnate herself in her proper time period.

So, Rosie resolved to just let their friendship develop, hex him whenever she needed to (If he stole something or hurt Sasha again she didn't plan on letting him get away with it, and what would her mum do to punish her anyway? Move her up to six therapy sessions a week instead of five?), and study up so that if he did kill someone, she'd be good enough at magic to murder him in his sleep and drop off the grid or something.

"Heads up, Rosie!"

She looked up just in time to see a beach ball hurtling towards her at a somewhat faster speed than what was normal. Her eyes widened and she shrieked as the ball smacked her in the face, bursting upon impact and covering her in seaweed.

Rosie growled, wiping the slimy gunk away from her eyes. Abraxas and Gerbern were laughing uproariously at her, Tom was smirking, and Augusta was giggling, her hand over her mouth and her eyes alight with mirth. The Selwyns had joined the Malfoys this year for a two-week vacation on the Adriatic Sea. As usual, they had left Dobby and Penny behind, and they had disappeared who-knows-where on vacations of their own, returning to check on the Manor every couple of days.

After a few seconds of glaring, Rosie finally gave in to the urge to smile. "You're laughing now, but when I wake up with beautiful, glowing skin tomorrow morning, you'll regret this: I'll blind you all as soon as the sun hits me!" she snarked.

Abraxas leered. "Bet Quentin would love that," he said slyly.

Rosie narrowed her eyes at him, then smiled innocently. "Maybe you should take some back for Valeria as a wedding gift. I'm sure she'd love that."

Abraxas' face turned a fascinating shade of red as he sputtered for a comeback. The others snickered at his embarrassment, and Rosie grinned triumphantly. Finally, Abraxas settled on a mumbled, "I don't like her…"

Rosie just gave him a knowing look, reformed the balloon from the seaweed sticking to her skin, and hurled it back into the fray to restart the game. They were on a wizarding beach surrounded by very strong anti-Muggle wards. Young witches and wizards zipped over the beach and waters on brooms, poleless umbrellas hovered over the chairs at exactly the right angle to block the sun, witches levitated carts of sugar quills and Chocolate Frogs between the sunbathers, children played Exploding Snap in the sand and built elaborate sand castles with their magic, and the Malfoy and Selwyn kids stood knee-high in the surf, playing with a beach ball transfigured from seaweed. If the ball hit any part of their bodies other than their hands or touched the water, it was charmed to explode violently and cover the nearest player in pureed seaweed. Rosie was in the lead with only one hit - she was a Chaser after all - while Augusta was losing by nearly twenty hits.

After an hour or so, they decided to call it quits, and went to play Exploding Snap on the beach. Tom opted to start reading a book on traditional Italian magic that Lysander had bought him the day before, when they had apparated to Venice. He sat down on the sand under an umbrella with a couple of unwrapped Chocolate Frogs. After about twenty minutes of reading, he heard someone plop down next to him, and found it was Rosie, with her own book clutched in her hands - this one about wandless magic, which she had gotten very good at since their mother had forbidden her from using her wand more than a year ago.

She noticed him studying her and smiled genially before swiping one of his Chocolate Frogs and settling in to read. His brow furrowed and he looked back at his book, but he'd already stopped paying attention to what was on the page. Rosie, his "sister," had always been a mystery to him. The day they'd met, she'd tried to kill him, but it hadn't worked. Then he'd hurt her pet, and she'd hexed him into oblivion. Then he'd convinced Augusta to give him her Chocolate Frog Card collection because she kept bragging about it and he just wanted it, and Rosie had hexed him again. Then she'd randomly decided to teach him quidditch, even going so far as to charm a broom to never let him fall off because he was so bad at the game.

Oh, and she was even better than him at wandless magic, possibly due to some pretty nasty Dark Arts books she'd been hiding under her bed for months via a wandless Concealment Charm. Couldn't forget that one.

And now, she offered him as much affection as she did the rest of their family members, and even more time and attention than the rest of them put together. They played quidditch nearly every day, her never losing patience at his obvious lack of skills, and she didn't intentionally step on his toes during their dance lessons, as she had done most incessantly when he'd first arrived at the Manor. She included him when she played with her friends, and came to sit and read with him in the library - often with the intention of pulling him into a game of Chocolate Frog Card War or wizard's chess after a particularly trying two-hour therapy session.

Tom was becoming more and more certain the therapy was necessary. After all, she'd gone from trying to kill him to treating him like her best friend in just over a year. There had to be something wrong with her.

"What are you thinking about?"

Tom glanced up and their eyes met. There was amusement dancing across her features, and he quirked an eyebrow, wondering what was so funny. "I'm reading," he said, as though it were obvious.

"Really?" she drawled. "You've been reading about spells to increase your sex appeal for the past ten minutes? You're a little young for that, Tom, don't you think? Although I'm not sure Augusta would complain. She might faint, in fact…"

Tom blanched when he looked down and found that he had, in fact, been pretending to read a page about such spells, and he snapped the book shut, shooting his adopted sister a scowl. She responded with a toothy grin, and he set the book down next to him and gave her a serious look that made her smile falter in confusion.

"I was wondering why you tried to kill me," he said plainly.

He watched as she froze, startled by his question, then looked away with a guilty look on her face. When she didn't say anything, he frowned and crossed his arms. "So? Why'd you try to kill me when we first met?" he prodded. "I know you only wanted to adopt me so that you would be close enough to me to finish the job, but you haven't done it. Actually, you're being unnaturally… nice to me. Are you just trying to get close to me so you can finish the job?"

Her head snapped up and she stared at him, horrified. "No! Of course not, Tom." Her brow creased and she looked at him with something like sadness in her eyes. "Do you really think I'm just pretending to be your friend? I actually really enjoy being around you. I'm not planning to kill you."

She paused, seeming to mull that over, and added, "If you don't give me a reason to." She gave him a very serious look then, and he got the uncomfortable impression she was talking to someone else when she spoke again: "Killing is wrong, Tom, as is controlling or hurting people," she said firmly. "No one has the right to do that kind of thing to another person, because everyone is valuable, no matter how worthless or horrible you may perceive them to be.

"I shouldn't have tried to kill you at the orphanage that day," she admitted softly. "It was wrong of me. I never gave you a chance to be something better than the person I perceived you to be. But you'll become a very powerful wizard someday, Tom, and if you forget that life is valuable, you'll be a danger to everyone around you." She stopped, then licked her lips and continued with a disturbingly determined expression. "If that day comes, I will kill you, Tom. I have to protect the people I love."

Rosie stared at him for a few seconds, the seriousness in her eyes telling Tom that she wasn't kidding about this, then she finally looked away. There was a long silence as what she'd said sank in, and he found himself even more confused than before. She had wanted to kill him because… why again? Because he might "forget that life is valuable"? What did that even mean? She wasn't making any sense!

Unfortunately, she chose that moment to stand up and run back into the waves, where Gerbern and Augusta were ganging up on Abraxas in a splash fight. Tom watched as she turned, ankle-deep in the waves, and gestured for him to follow. The smile on her face was so bright it was nearly blinding, despite her grim words just moments before, and he found him standing up to join her despite himself.